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Thomas Geering was the author of the book Our Sussex Parish and appears to have spent most (if not all) of his life in Hailsham, Sussex. Having spent some time looking into his background I have been unable to find an obvious connection with my GEERING ancestors from Hailsham.

Thomas (pictured left) was born on the 6th September 1813 and baptised on the 31st October 1813 at Ebenezer Chapel, Alfriston, Sussex. His parents were Thomas GEERING and Elizabeth HOLMAN, who had married in Alfriston parish church on the 30th November 1812. It looks like Thomas and Elizabeth may have had another two or three children.

Thomas followed his father’s footsteps into a career as shoemaker and currier, based in Hailsham. By the 1851 census Thomas’ father has died and he is running the business with his mother. In the 1871 census Thomas is employing seven men and two boys in his business, however by 1881 he is only employing five men.

In Q2 1854 Thomas married Frances HOLMAN in Hailsham Registration District. The couple only had one child, Emma, whose birth was registered in Hailsham Registration District in Q1 1858. Thomas died in 1889 and was buried at Hailsham parish church on the 3rd May 1889 aged 75 years. Frances appears to have carried on the business for a while after Thomas’ death. Frances herself died in 1903.

So where does this leave me, well I can’t make a connection to my family yet, in fact I can’t confidently go back beyond Thomas’ father. I have a similar problem with my own GEERING ancestors, things start to get confusing once I get back around 1800.

Only time (and more research) will tell if there is a connection between the two sets of GEERINGs. There is however one story in the book that seems to relate to my ancestors, the story of “The Old Druggist: Her Shop And Her Lodger”, more about that later.